Coming soon: a film city, near you.

Purple Movie Town, a Rs 37 crore venture at Sonarpur, on the southern fringes of the city, will throw open doors this winter. A “one-stop shop for a film-maker’s every need”, it will provide production facilities over 6.5 acres — compared with the 600 acres of Hyderabad’s Ramoji Rao film city.

“With the Tollygunge studios in such a dilapidated state and the demand for shooting locations rising, we understood the need for a place where technicians and actors could come in and shoot in peace and comfort,” said Pritimoy Chakraborty, the chairman of Finesse, a company involved in retail, electronics and infrastructure creation that is powering Purple Movie Town.

A 30-minute drive from the Technician’s Studio at Tollygunge, the film city will have 20 ready locations — from airport to railway station, shopping complex to hospital, college to temple, police station to court room — to aim and shoot. One studio will throw open its doors in November, while the rest is slated for a Poila Baisakh launch.

There will be accommodation for technicians and actors, apartments to shoot in, sound editing and dubbing studios and also a preview theatre for producers to see rushes and showcase their films to the trade. Plus, production control rooms with business centres and art direction facilities.

Veteran art director Nitish Roy, who has worked with Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal and Mira Nair and has designed the Ramoji Rao film city, is the design brain behind the movie town.

“The project is a genuine effort to conserve the tradition of filmmaking in a feasible environment. Purple Movie Town is considerably smaller than Ramoji Rao, but it is a state-of-the-art project,” Roy told Metro from Mumbai. All the ready locations will be of fibreglass. “Detachable and convertible, the same house or temple can be given different looks from shoot to shoot.”

The centrally air-conditioned film city is eyeing the Bhojpuri, Assamese and Oriya film industries, besides Tollywood. “Bhojpuri films are made on huge budgets but are struggling for shooting locations,” said Chakraborty.

And then there’s the booming reality television business. “The TV business, particularly the reality genre, will go big in the next year or so in Bengal,” felt Chakraborty.

Tollywood is upbeat about Purple Movie Town. “Prosenjit has been a pillar of strength and support while Bratya Basu has already visited the site,” said Chakraborty.

If one studio floor is being named after Soumitra Chatterjee, another will be dedicated to Mithun Chakraborty. “I have given my consent,” Mithun told Metro. The 20-odd make-up rooms will be named after Bengali actresses — from Kanan Devi to Rituparna Sengupta.

Purple Movie Town aims to make good its Rs 37 crore investment by 2013-14. “Even after calculating in terms of 50 per cent occupancy, we will start making money within the first three years,” said Chakraborty.